Visit the Kill Switch Master List for more information on these and other current known issues: https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/kb/articles/299-kill-switch-master-list
We encourage you to be as honest as possible in letting us know how you feel about the game. The information and answers provided are anonymous, not shared with any third-party, and will not be used for purposes other than survey analysis.
Access the survey HERE!
This Houndmaster "bugfix" is concerning.
Houndmaster received a HUGE buff that, apparently, was a fix to a bug: She maintains her movement speed boost when walking along a scent trail in a chase.
At first, I wasn't too worried about this change, purely because the scent trail is a small line that's at the mercy of the dog's pathfinding. Having played as and against her, though, I can already say the following with confidence:
- Getting the scent trail to go somewhere useful in a chase is much easier than landing a bite with the dog
- The in-chase haste is a much stronger chase ability than the dog's bite
I find this concerning because before the bugfix, it felt pretty clear-cut to me that the dog's Chase command was the, well, chase aspect of her power, and the Search command was the tracking/map pressure part of it. Now, though, her ability to gain haste in chase is so good and so easy to use that in most situations it kind of renders the dog's bite obsolete.
Houndmaster has a lot of problems, but not being able to go Sprint Burst speed in a chase pretty much whenever she wants was definitely not one of them.
Comments
-
For God's sake, man. Just move away from the trail and she loses her speed, I didn't see any problem with that, very rarely will you be able to use it in a chase, it depends more on the survivor than on you.
10 -
very rarely will you be able to use it in a chase
I can safely say using it in a chase is extremely easy to access and happens every chase if you know what you're doing.
3 -
I'll have to test it out myself, but I think this is overblown. You can see the trail and with search she is plain M1 so it shouldn't be that hard to avoid outside of pure deadzones. It doesn't like to give you the speed when the trail drops down sharply, and she also can't use the speed to bypass both pallets and windows, so I'd argue there's plenty of counterplay including moving out of the way.
Her limit on search area is also somewhat small outside of targeting objectives, so if you're far enough you can just hold W and make sure to stray away from whatever gen she targets.
2 -
Even on Houndmaster's worst maps like Lery's, I am able to use the trail to extremely great effect. If it even slightly grazes a loop, you can use it to boost your lunge speed and easily catch people out of line.
"She's just a plain M1" Yeah, who moves at Sprint Burst speed when the trail is active—which, if you know what you're doing, is nearly all the time.
if you're far enough you can just hold W and make sure to stray away from whatever gen she targets.
She can still just point the trail at the gen and then walk along it until she gets close to you. Or she can also point the trail where you're going. It's really not that hard for her to adjust.
0 -
All in all it's less about how well it works against good players and more about "is this the way the designer(s) wanted the power to be used", and my guess is no. It did feel weird coming to a dead stop when initiating a chase though.
4 -
It felt so wonky coming to a complete hault when you found a survivor. Although, I am almost p13 with her now. I play her everyday, so I have been able to spend time figuring out what works. The search ability people are avoiding the haste by cutting the path so she loses haste and generally there is a vault or pallet available for them anyways.
I think it helps her but I dont think the bugfix is an issue. The dog grab is still a must for her chase ability and I wouldnt say its replaced by the search ability just from a bug fix. I get the concern, and its totally valid, but I have only gotten value a few times out of it and I am pretty good with her already.
0 -
I also consider myself pretty good with her and I can consistently get more search haste value in one match more than I can get bite value in an entire day of gameplay now—and not for lack of landing bites; the search haste is just that good.
0 -
I will disagree on that - truthfully in my opinion. The haste is good, but the chase essential.
0 -
If you have even a basic ability to predict where survivors are going to go—which I'm assuming you do if you consider yourself good at a killer as prediction-heavy as Houndmaster—then you can always put the search path going towards or running very nearly alongside the survivor with ease every time, and give yourself an ample amount of haste to rush the survivor down at a rate that would make Legion mains consider ending it all. The only time you should be having real issues is if you're on an indoor map and find yourself at the mercy of the dog's janky pathfinding, but even then.
0 -
While it is concerning I'd rather they massively buff the chase rather than the speed boost
1 -
the dog bite was worthless before the change. they lower skill-floor that you no longer need to moonwalk to use search boost speed for loops. the thing is, something as obscure as this was hardly ever utilized so it comes out as huge buff.
0 -
Yeah so after a lot of games and build tweaking today, being able to search mode speed spam has completely changed how she works. Because of the cooldown differences and BHVR's insistence on having to have the dog manually path back to you to initiate the cooldown in the first place, using chase (especially committing to a redirect play) just feels way riskier than using search to get hits at a lot of tiles. There are situations where chase shines (like yoinking people before they reach a god window/pallet, stalling hook saves, timing vault animation hits, etc), and landing cheeky redirects will always feel good, but the search "bugfix" allows you to be way more aggressive/time efficient on a macro level and in the 1v1.
Is she good good now though? Eh, not really.
I think she's still pretty meh overall because she feels shoehorned into slowdown stacking, as a lot of other perks just don't really synergize with her kit whatsoever (at least, not to the degree where they feel impactful enough to run) and she has no built in passive macro mechanic to make up for her relative lack of lethality against good players. The pathing problems & search targeting issues are still prevalent as well (why does she have a jank Nurse/Pinhead-style windup, why) which can waste a lot of time if you're unlucky.
0
